SlashGear Week in Review – Week 6 2011

Welcome to another edition of the SlashGear Week in Review. Lots of tablet and smartphone news this week with a few other cool items tossed in for good measure. Overall, it was a good week to be a geek. Canalys offered up some stats on the smartphone OS wars that show Android was the world’s leading smartphone platform in Q4 2010.

LG offered up some details on the Optimus 3D ahead of its official MWC 2011 debut. The smartphone has a 4.3-inch screen and a dual-core CPU. We learned the Nintendo 3DS browser and eShop have been delayed until May. The browser and game store were originally expected to ship loaded on the new portable console.

Samsung has done some backtracking on the sales numbers for the Galaxy Tab after bragging about the sales numbers for a while that have climbed past 2 million. Samsung has finally admitted that those numbers are shipments to retailers and that sales to customers have been “quite small.” If you are a user of Windows Phone 7 the culprit for the phantom data use has been fingered. The cause of the issue is apparently Yahoo Mail along with an inefficiency in the WinPo 7 mail client for phantom data use some users are reporting.

LG has confirmed some more of the specs of the Optimus 3D smartphone ahead for MWC 2011 on Tuesday. We learned that the smartphone has a 3D camera and HDMI out along with a screen that needs no glasses for 3D effects. Panasonic stuck a price on its new digital cameras with the Lumix GF2 getting a $499.95 price for the body only and kits with lenses at $599.95 or $699.95.

Google accused Bing of copying its search results this week and had some proof of the theft. Google planted a fake word in its SERPs and the same word could be found with the same results on Bing apparently. Nielsen released some metrics this week that show 43% of all smartphone sales are Android devices. Android also holds 27% of the market according to the metrics firm.

The LG G-Slate was detailed this week with 3D recording and Playback being noted as part of the feature set of the device. The tablet will have a Tegra 2 processor, run Android 3.0, and have 32GB of storage along with 5MP camera. A bug in MeeGo has offered up hints at a new flagship smartphone coming soon with a 1.6GHz processor inside, 854 x 480 display, and a lot more. Other leaked specs include 1GB of RAM, 200MHz GPU, and lots more.

Mr. Potato Head is getting the Star Trek treatment this summer. You will be able to create your own Potato Head Capitan Kirk and Kor the evil Klingon to fight with and each of them will be about $30. An awesome new medical breakthrough for burn patients was spied this week called the Skin Gun. The device sprays liquid skin onto burns and wounds rather than having to perform grafts.

We reviewed the Verizon iPhone 4 mid-week and liked it. The Verizon iPhone does away with the weakest part of the AT&T offering – AT&T. A gross commercial for the XPERIA Play gaming smartphone leaked that has our little green Android buddy getting thumbs grafted on. He wants to get his game on too!

A strange contraption called the StreetFlyer turned up Thursday that hangs the rider under a big boom in a sling like a hang glider. The idea is that the rider gets the feeling of flight while riding in the bike. Apple filed a patent app for a cool stylus that will work for the iPad. The stylus will have integrated pressure detecting circuits and would communicate with the iPad via WiFi or Bluetooth.

Google has offered up a prize of $20,000 for anyone that can hack Chrome. The contest is called Pwn2Own and the winner has to successfully compromise a Windows 7 machine using Chrome. A cool set of 3D glasses from Armani called the Armani Exchange 3D turned up Thursday. The glasses are passive and will work with RealD and look very 80’s retro to me.

NASA has made a really awesome discovery. Kepler has found a group of six planets that are Earth-size orbiting one star in the area where they could have liquid water on the surface. A new iOS 4.2.1 jailbreak has been released. The new jailbreak is called GreenPois0n and can be used untethered.

Sony’s Kaz Hirai talked about the NGP portable on video this week and gave some details on why Nintendo unveiled so early in the year for a later launch. According to Hirai, the move was so Nintendo could talk with devs openly about the new console. Verizon set a first day sales record when it started taking pre-orders from existing customers on the iPhone 4. The amazing part is that the record was set in only two hours.

A thief was busted this week after he leapt out the window of a home he was trying to rob when the owner came home. The crook left his own cell phone charging in the house he was robbing. A high school freshman with an immune system problem is using a Vgo robot to attend classes like a normal student. The school district paid for the robot which coast about $6000 including the service contract.

Nokia Beta Labs released a sweet new app for some Nokia devices called Bubbles. Bubbles lets the user unlock the phone and go right to what they want to do in one motion. AT&T confirmed on Friday that the iPhone 4 will be one of the devices that gets tethering option. The tethering data allowance was also increased to 4GB. Thanks for reading this week’s edition, see you next time!